The Queens Oak

Sometimes I am the Peter Mandelson of creativity. That is not the case today.

Those of you with a keen memory that have travelled down the M40 may remember the graffiti “Why Do I Do This Every Day?”.

It was painted over, only to be replaced some time later with “Why Do I Still Do This Every Day?”.

In the same way that I got up, had a shower, made my breakfast, went to work, etc etc this morning, yesterday I woke up and worked out how I was going to accomplish my roast dinner mission with an automation that would make the most autistic autoist autopilot automatically proud.

Why do I do this every week?

I was even more tired yesterday than I am today, after an initial hour-long burst of activity, I was ready to go back to bed by 11am. I soldiered on as I had booked a table at the Queen’s Oak in Finchampstead for midday.

Ahhhh – midday. That should then guarantee good roast potatoes shouldn’t it? Surely there was no chance that they would have been sitting there for hours?

The pub itself was odd and rather weathered – not in a hipster kind of way either. Partitioned into two, arguably beneficial given my fragile state yesterday and the Christening going on in the larger room – according to our table neighbour this would be so they could get into a good school. Yes it was cosy but space was at a premium and it was as if you were sat on the same table as your table neighbours – or at least it seemed that way to my socialist accomplice who kept trying to join in with their conversation. It isn’t the north, my friend.

Anyway, the chairs were plastic. Have you ever bought a plastic crown from Poundland, whilst dressing up as a king/queen? The chairs were something kind of along those lines, sat against walls of nicotine yellow and dark blood red. If I didn’t feel uncomfortable and ill beforehand, I did now.

This is all incidental though. Good food is what matters. There were no menus either online from the equally shabby-looking Wix website, or in the pub itself. There was a specials board but if you wanted to know what was on it, you’d have to go have a look at the board next door as they weren’t going to tell you.

We were miserably advised where our table was, so we toddled off to locate it. It took a good 10 minutes before we were asked what we wanted and offered the option of having a drink. I wasn’t in the slightest dehydrated after a heavy weekend, not at all. Options were pork, beef and lamb. I went for the pork at £11.50 – my accomplice went for the lamb at £12.50.

The vegetables came in a side-dish so we’ll start there. Both the broccoli and green beans were predictably ordinary. Softer than ideal – the green beans were unusually dark too.

There were a fair few full baby carrots – cooked with roots complete, crunchy and sweet. In fact they were actually a bit larger than baby carrots – I think they have a proper name. The pick of the vegetables by a long way.

So how about the midday roast potatoes that I had high hopes would not have been sat around for hours turning into a car tyre? Well, they hadn’t been sat around for hours and they weren’t made of rubber either.

However, instead they were quite well-undercooked and not roasted either. The taste and texture was that of a deep-fried potato – they were closer to enlarged flat chips and certainly not what I would call a roast potato.

The Yorkshire pudding was quite bowl-like. Homemade and a touch too thin and crispy in places – a smidgen overdone and burnt on top but overall not too bad despite my unappealing description.

There were four smallish slices of pork loin. It didn’t really stand out in any way so I blame the Tories because they promised me 5 slices by 2021 but instead they cut this to 4 slices instead of the usual 3 slices. My friend also said that the lamb was good. Then again he thought that the “roast” potatoes were really good too. Oh yeah and he votes Labour.

Thanks to Iain Duncan-Smith’s resignation, the cuts were reversed and stuffing was provided both with the pork and lamb dishes. This was a ball of joy – homemade, packed full of herbtastic taste.

I even had Steven Crabb crackling which was edible despite me having been attacked by the evil Tory dentist earlier in the week. A mixture of crunch and soft fat, this was quite delicious.

But not a patch on the pig in blanket which was just drool-worthy. I probably was dribbling. I am possibly still dribbling now. It was again homemade sausage meat – stumpy but fat – a bit like Eric Pickles. Sorry, Sir Eric Pickles MBE.

I appreciate that my review didn’t flow this week. I’m not even going to attempt to improve it apart from to check spelling/grammar mistakes of which there was a record amount.

Gosh I had forgotten about the gravy. My socialist friend said it was like a jus. It wasn’t. It was quite a thick, gloopy gravy. There was almost none on the plate but it came with a large gravy boat. Fairly ordinary but ordinary gravy is most acceptable. I’m really not firing on all cylinders today, am I?

What they did well at The Queens Oak pub (be careful if using your sat nav trying to locate this place) they did well – in particular my favourite being the pig in blanket. The deep fried potatoes were below par and not enjoyable. It was a pretty northern affair – I’d be tempted to rate it a Featherstone.

I’m going to give it a 7.4 out of 10. Were it not for the little extras, then it would have been around a 6.2.

Next weekend I’m up north again – the weekend after I’m clubbing so you might have to wait 3 weeks until the next review. But after the linguistic crapness of this review, I doubt that you will be crying into your gravy.

Oh yeah there was a parsnip too. There was something not quite right about it – perhaps it was deep fried too.